The Inquiring Mindhttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com
Commentary on what interests me, reflecting my personal take on the worldSun, 01 Mar 2015 21:27:16 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/84d0c0b0b5f1dfdfab4580e979c4e415?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.wp.com%2Fi%2Fbuttonw-com.pngThe Inquiring Mindhttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com
Precious, arrogant, patronisinghttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/precious-arrogant-patronising/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/precious-arrogant-patronising/#commentsSat, 28 Feb 2015 18:07:21 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24898]]>These were a few of the adjectives which came to mind when Adam read this article in the Herald the other day. Lauraine Jacobs, described as a world renowned food writer

was invited to speak at an event organised by online review site Zomato. But in a leaked email she reveals her disdain for those “unqualified” to review restaurants.

So only the elite are ‘qualified’ to have an opinion or to write a review according to Ms Jacobs, if she was accurately reported.

Also in the article she is quoted as saying:

I do not agree with commercial sites like [Zomato] that rely on unqualified and unpaid restaurant reviewers,” wrote Jacobs.

“Unqualified amateur diners who are rewarded with stars for the sheer number of reviews they post, but usually are lacking in expertise and have no knowledge of the industry, can completely destroy the trade and reputation of good restaurants.”

This is in Adam’s opinion an extremely patronising, arrogant viewpoint. Diners who pay for their meals are fully entitled to express an opinion. It is up to those who read the opinion to assess whether they will be guided by it. Adam tends to read a wide variety of reviews if they are available, but likes to form his ultimate view based on personal experience. He has visited a number of places over the years which established food writers gush over, but he has not found them to be as outstanding as claimed. Adam’s views on a restaurant are as valid as Ms Jacobs. If Adam writes a review and posts it online that is his opinion, others are perfectly entitled to agree or disagree. Adam has found that he tends to place credence on reviews by people who has found over time tend to assess places similarly to himself, both on sites like Zomato and writers in magazines and newspapers. In a similar manner to reviews by TV and Film writers on blogs and papers and review sites.

Adam took particular offence at this quote from Ms Jacobs:-

“The average punter is entitled to an opinion, but when it comes to restaurant and food reviews, the ability to eat is not enough,” she said.

Pretentious twaddle spouted by someone who it is clear thinks customers should pay up, pay up and keep quiet as they are only qualified to pay money, but not qualified to really understand what is going on. What an arrogant set of statements by Ms Jacobs. Then of course the most insulting statement was this one:-

an unrepentant Jacobs told the Herald on Sunday online review forums gave a voice to people who may offer their thoughts on food when “in a bad mood that day” or who might be in an “alcoholic haze”.

What a patronising statement. Perhaps Ms Jacobs was in a bad mood when contacted by the Herald.

Disclosure: Adam goes to restaurants and bars on a regular basis, as a paying customer. He has been fortunate enough to eat many good meals in such places, he has also had some poor experiences as well. This post was written in the morning after a good night’s rest and he was in a good mood when he wrote it and was not in the remnants of an ‘alcoholic haze’, as was so memorably quoted by Ms Jacobs.

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/precious-arrogant-patronising/feed/0Adam SmithThe Saturday Rant – February 28, 2014https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/the-saturday-rant-february-28-2014/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/the-saturday-rant-february-28-2014/#commentsSat, 28 Feb 2015 08:27:18 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24895]]>Well readers Adam is back after a prolonged absence. He will not bore you with the details as to why he took a blogging vacation.

So why start with a rant, well there is so much to rant about at the moment from the behaviour of the appalling MSM, the pusillanimous posture struck by many politicians over the ISIS threat, especially as much of the posturing seems motivated by a desire to attack John Key rather than principle.

Now to business:-

1 Texting whilst walking

As Adam was taking a mid-morning walk this morning he was forced to divert from his line of progression on the footpath by a young woman who was walking along the pavement, but paying no attention to the surroundings or the need to take account of other people. She was far too busy texting on her phone and with earphones in it was doubtful if she had any spatial awareness at all. then when she almost barged into Adam, he was glared at as if it was his fault. Does nobody ever explain to these ‘people’ that common courtesy requires that they be aware of what is going on around them. Furthermore does anyone really need to text whilst they are walking along the street? Do none of these people have any manners? No doubt to many these days manners are an outdated concept. Philistines!

2 The Cunliffe ‘mispeaks’ again

To use a Hillaryism the behaviour of the erstwhile Labour Leader in mis-speaking yet again, caught using his cellphone whilst driving, but denying knowledge of the law is shocking, but on the other hand typical of Cunliffe and his fellows on the left. Indeed it summons up memories of Bill Clinton claiming that although he smoked marijuana he did not inhale. As usual what Cunliffe says is unbelievable. Literally! Yet this man was seen by many, and indeed still is by some, as the Messiah to lead NZ out of the wilderness. Cough, Cough!

Even the DomPost was somewhat critical:-

No doubt the item was not written by Andrea Vance.

3 Lazarus to stand in Northland

Will this be the last hurrah? As usual he could not speak plainly and only confirmed his intention to stand at the very end. Can we not get rid of this irrelevant distraction? To quote Olver Cromwell’s address to the Rump Parliament in April 1753:-

You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!

Adam considers Cromwell had it right and Winston should go.

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2015/02/28/the-saturday-rant-february-28-2014/feed/1Adam SmithNew Doc 17_1Laila forgets her tinfoil hat and is replaced by an alien life formhttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/laila-forgets-her-tinfoil-hat-and-is-replaced-by-an-alien-life-form/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/laila-forgets-her-tinfoil-hat-and-is-replaced-by-an-alien-life-form/#commentsMon, 15 Sep 2014 23:43:07 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24893]]>This can be the only reason she said:

Ms Harre told TV3’s Firstline programme this morning the email “provides very clear evidence that the Prime Minister did know about the existence of Kim Dotcom and more than that, that he was involved very intimately with the process of this case.”

“I have no doubt that Kim is absolutely truthful about that email.

“There needs to be a proper process now to investigate that.”

Asked why Dotcom declined to comment on the email last night, Ms Harre said he’d received legal advice not to do so.

“The strong advice to him was to make sure that this evidence was put before a proper judicial process. That is what Parliament’s privileges committee is.

“He followed the advice, rather than his gut instinct to share everything yesterday.

The problem is that:-

Many commentators consider the email referred to, to be a fake and a pretty poor one

Parliament is dissolved, so there is no Privileges Cttee so that reasoning is spurious and leads one to consider she and others are casting around desperately for reasons not to discuss the email

If his gut said share everything he could have done so months ago, this claim about his gut simply does not have any credibility

The idea that Key, Obama et al are micro-managing the affairs of NZ and the USA to this extent does not just strain the bounds of credibility it blows them asunder

We do know for a fact though that

Harre is a politician bought and paid for by Dotcom.

Internet-Mana is Dotcom’s tool for attacking John Key

Dotcom is desperate to avoid extradition, so a government he owns would assist that

Many journalists, so called, have worshipped at the Dotcom shrine uncritically reporting his every utterance and seeking to traduce the gainsayers

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/16/laila-forgets-her-tinfoil-hat-and-is-replaced-by-an-alien-life-form/feed/3Adam SmithMeanwhile on Planet Parker the self delusion and denial continueshttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/meanwhile-on-planet-parker-the-self-delusion-and-denial-continues/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/meanwhile-on-planet-parker-the-self-delusion-and-denial-continues/#commentsMon, 08 Sep 2014 05:31:51 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24891]]>Some on the left and in the media refer to Planet Key as a shorthand for John Key not being in the real world. Well it would appear that Labour’s David Parker has discovered a his own planet where he clearly dwells happily undisturbed by any contact with reality, as these extracts illustrate:-

In last Friday’s NBR, Mr Parker is quoted as follows:-

NBR 5 Sept
According to Labour’s Shadow Attorney-General David Parker, allegations arising from the publication of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics and the steady stream of leaks since are indicative of “a new style of politics.”
“I’ve got no doubt Bill English wouldn’t have done this and he’s as much as said that and neither would Helen Clark,” he says.

This comment caused Adam to recollect a recent article by one Duncan Garner on political sleaze:-

Duncan Garner DomPost
It’s worth noting this shadowy attack-politics stuff is not new and not the sole domain of National.
The then Labour Party president Mike Williams took a well-publicised trip to Melbourne to dig dirt on Key ahead of the 2008 election. It backfired: Labour found nothing and subsequently dropped in the polls.
Helen Clark was probably the biggest gossip of them all when she led the country. She leaked and spread rumours about people and even those in her own team – I wonder how her private communications and those of her senior ministers would look splashed across a book. I bet it wouldn’t be pretty. Her Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels was sacked for allegations ‘‘swirling’’ over allegedly having sex with someone under the age of consent decades previously – it was Clark and her team making them swirl.
Samuels, later exonerated by a police investigation, never got a fair hearing – the ninth floor of the Beehive killed him off. I was with him at his house the night he was sacked – he was devastated and blamed Clark for the dirty tricks.
The murky Left infiltrated a National Party cocktail function in 2008, secretly recorded MPs and leaked them (to me).
I was also involved in a series of stories about former Cabinet minister John Tamihere over financial irregularities at his previous job at the Waipareira Trust which saw him sacked as a minister. When I got home, my house had been broken into. Nothing was taken but all the windows and doors had been left open. TV3 hired a security firm to change the locks, watch my kids at school and investigate the break-in. The firm concluded that someone wanted to frighten me – and we left it there.
I also remember doing business with Labour’s chief of staff Matt McCarten in the 1990s, when he ran the Alliance. Matt was fun and charming – but let’s not kid ourselves, if anyone knew how to run a black ops sting it was him.
Senior Labour ministers and press secretaries rang to point me toward The Standard, a Left-wing blog, to read its vitriol on certain days. Who had written those posts? I’m told many were written under fake names by Labour staffers paid by the taxpayer.

Clearly Mr Parker is in some other universe where there is a parallel world where Helen Clark and the left are as pure as a new born child.

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/meanwhile-on-planet-parker-the-self-delusion-and-denial-continues/feed/1Adam SmithSaturday’s smileshttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/saturdays-smiles/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/saturdays-smiles/#commentsSat, 06 Sep 2014 03:01:55 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/saturdays-smiles/Homepaddock:David Cunliffe walked into a bank to cash a cheque, went up to a cashier and said, “Good morning, Ma’am, could you please cash this cheque for me?” Cashier:” I’d be happy to sir. Could you please show me your ID?” Cunliffe: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me…]]>

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/09/06/saturdays-smiles/feed/0Adam SmithVandals active in Hutt Southhttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/vandals-active-in-hutt-south/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/vandals-active-in-hutt-south/#commentsSat, 23 Aug 2014 05:56:26 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24877]]>As Adam was out and about the Hutt South electorate today it was apparent that the anti-democratic vandals had been active. Again! Many National billboards had not only been covered in obnoxious graffiti, but severely damaged by portions of the billboard being cut out. Clearly not casual vandalism, but deliberate and dare Adam suggest it, organised as few people typically walk along a street with a box cutter or equivalent just so they can mutilate a hoarding.

Here are some samples of their handiwork, firstly Parkway in Wainuiomata, often referred to as Moa country,

There were several others, but you get the drift. Clearly somebody in Wainuiomata is upset by the many blue hoardings appearing in what has long been regarded as Mallard’s stronghold.

Then there were these examples of the vandals skills in Boulcott and Waterloo Road, seen earlier today

and

and

and

Note the common use of box cutters, the eye mutilation and the sheer vitriol and bile of the comments.

To Adam’s mind, these were orchestrated and targetted. As far as Adam saw no other party suffered damage such as this. In nearly all cases the damage was focused on John Key.

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/vandals-active-in-hutt-south/feed/0Adam Smith2014-08-22 10.41.202014-08-22 10.43.212014-08-23 07.07.122014-08-23 07.07.352014-08-23 07.21.312014-08-23 07.21.50Outraged of Tunbridge Wells has emigrated to New Zealandhttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/outraged-of-tunbridge-wells-has-emigrated-to-new-zealand/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/outraged-of-tunbridge-wells-has-emigrated-to-new-zealand/#commentsThu, 21 Aug 2014 04:58:31 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24875]]>When Adam was a young man and living in England, that green and pleasant land of fond memory, warm beer, cucumber sandwiches and cricket on the village green, there was a category of letter writer to the editor of newspapers such as the Tellegraph referred to in a kind of shorthand as ‘Outraged of Tunbridge Wells’, which instantly summoned a mental picture of a choleric elderly gentleman or lady from a somnolent country town who professed to be outraged, dismayed and disgusted with some recent event. The recent publication of Nicky Hager’s ‘book’ has led Adam to the conclusion that many of these stereotypes have not only emigrated to NZ, but many seem to have gained less than useful employment as hacks and so called journalists. How else to explain the shock, horror occasioned by the publication of the Slater Papers. Adam’s reasoning includes concluding that these people have clearly led very sheltered lives as they have obviously never ever come up against the realities of life, nor visited the public bar of just about any hostelry the world over. No wonder NZ media is such a mess, when so many of it’s leading ‘reporters’ seem to be such precious hothouse flowers that wilt outside the beltway.]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/outraged-of-tunbridge-wells-has-emigrated-to-new-zealand/feed/0Adam SmithOverheard in a Lower Hutt cafe, this morninghttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/overheard-in-a-lower-hutt-cafe-this-morning/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/overheard-in-a-lower-hutt-cafe-this-morning/#commentsThu, 21 Aug 2014 04:23:29 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24873]]>Taking a brief break from a shopping expedition, Adam was partaking of a very welcome long black and reading the Hutt News in a cafe on Queens Drive in the Lower Hutt CBD this morning. At the next table were a group of office workers, who it appeared worked at a nearby state agency.

Adam could not help but overhear their conversation. It was about ‘that book’ and that ‘fat German fella”. To summarise the ladies were not impressed by the ‘fat German fells, what’s is name’ and seemed less than impressed with that book and the ‘author’ making money from stolen material. They were more interested in real issues and policies.

As Adam had suspected from the start, Real People see through the flim and the flam. Is seems strange that the media do not. The Hager factor seems more likely to annoy Real Kiwis. Annoyed voters are more likely not to vote or in this case vote National, as they find the opponents so unappealing.

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/overheard-in-a-lower-hutt-cafe-this-morning/feed/0Adam SmithAdam is shocked, shocked…..https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/adam-is-shocked-shocked/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/adam-is-shocked-shocked/#commentsThu, 21 Aug 2014 03:39:03 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24870]]>to discover that there is so much despicable behaviour in NZ politics. Indeed he is outraged to find this out from the media, he was so disturbed by it all that he took refuge in a bottle of Pinot Noir, from Otagao, and a lesisurely viewing of one of his favourite movies Casablanca. This scene reminded him so much of what is happening at the present time:

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/08/21/adam-is-shocked-shocked/feed/1Adam SmithA small mistake but telling in what it revealshttps://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/a-small-mistake-but-telling-in-what-it-reveals/
https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/a-small-mistake-but-telling-in-what-it-reveals/#commentsFri, 18 Jul 2014 00:03:10 +0000http://adamsmith.wordpress.com/?p=24867]]>Labour, like most parties, is making use of social media this election. David Cunliffe, the current Labour Party leader, has a fairly strong Facebook presence and when he posts there is a coterie of fans who lap up his comments.

It was perhaps a little unfortunate that the proof reading gremlin struck this post:-

David Cunliffe – The technological revolution will open up opportunities for our kids that we can’t even imagine today. Every kid should have those opportunities. Under a Labour Government I lead, ever kid will.

It was unfortunate in the extreme that a post concerned with education highlighted either an inability to spell, or a lack of vocabulary, or a lack of comprehension or a lack of proof reading by anybody who understood the use of language. Was the error noticed? Did someone just assume the audience would never notice? Perhaps the author assumed nobody would read the graphic closely!

Then of course the folksy use of the descriptor kids for children, when the graphic used the word child. Finally the blanket promise that every child will have unimaginable opportunities. That is a promise which is just not capable of fulfillment. A moment of reflection will convey that to the reader. The statement fails on so many levels, it is just not credible.

Oh and by the way simply giving children a computer or tablet or whatever, will not of itself solve issues of opportunity, attitude or ability.

This leads me to ponder the question as to whether Cunliffe and his team assume that the electorate are fools to be bought off with the modern equivalent of brad and circuses?

]]>https://adamsmith.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/a-small-mistake-but-telling-in-what-it-reveals/feed/3Adam SmithDavid Cunliffe - The technological revolution will open up opportunities for our kids that we can't even imagine today. Every kid should have those opportunities. Under a Labour Government I lead, ever kid will.